Editor’s note: Every so often, a song comes along during a game, and sticks with you long after the credits have rolled. And once in a while, you get to speak with the person/s who crafted that piece of music. This is a series that endeavours to learn a bit more about such iconic tracks from those who composed them.
Towards the very beginning of 2009’s Assassin’s Creed II, a memory of Ezio Auditore’s is relived by Desmond Miles in the Animus. In that brief reminiscence known to players of the game as the ‘Sibling Rivalry’ level, Ezio races his brother Federico around Florence, before concluding atop a tower and agreeing that they live a good life. Cue the opening credits, and the song that unleashed goosebumps over the flesh of millions worldwide.
“Ezio’s Family happened very organically,” says Jesper Kyd, the composer on numerous games including most notably Assassin’s Creed II, “It was one of those things where as soon as I figured out the story, I knew what needed to be done. There’s this really big shift in the game, sort of like where things are going, and then [the developers] drop the floor out from beneath you. That was something that really needed to be captured in the music as well.”
At the time, as Kyd rightly reminds me, being transported digitally to a super-realistic depiction of another part of the world was still quite fresh. “Just being in Florence or being in Italy — travelling to some of those real-world locations and seeing them depicted realistically — was very new and I don’t know any of the games that were really doing this at that time,” he says, “So being in the city was one important aspect of the whole thing, but it was equally important to the [development team] to remind the player that they were still playing a simulation, that they were still in the Animus. And that’s where everything came from.”
For the uninitiated and in the simplest of terms, in the world of Assassin’s Creed, the Animus is a virtual reality machine that allows a user to read a host’s genetic memory and creates simulations of those memories. Given its electronic nature, the music too would have to reflect this dichotomy of human memory and machine-generation. “It’s why there’s so many odd electronic sounds weaving in and out and even the clean female vocals were messed up with my electronics to give it the feeling that something was a little bit off,” explains Kyd.
When crafting the music for the Hitman games, the Danish composer put himself into the mind of Agent 47. When composing for Warhammer: Vermintide 2, he had to ‘join the Skaven army’. What about when it came to penning Ezio’s Family, I venture. “I had thoughts about my own father and brother while writing this track,” comes the response, “The story of Ezio losing his father and brothers was something that inspired the music. Your family is in many ways your cornerstone. Having lost all this and at a somewhat early age, it’s beyond tragic. Yet, you somehow have to find a way to go on and make your father and brothers proud. This event wasn’t going to be a wasted experience, Ezio was going to use this as fuel to become one of the greatest assassins to ever live.”
Sixteen years ago, there was obviously no way for Kyd to know that the Assassin’s Creed II soundtrack would get the life it has these days, or that it would generate more traffic, clicks and all sorts of other metrics than back when it first dropped. He attributes its longevity to an interesting set of factors. “People tend to forget about games soundtracks, but Assassin’s Creed II is just such a brilliant game and Ezio is such a popular character that even though we stopped that particular adventure 12 years ago, he’s still the character in everyone’s mind,” says the composer. And the attachment to the character and game would be incomplete without factoring in the song that’s become a mainstay of the Assassin’s Creed universe.
“The song,” says Kyd, “has evolved into something bigger now, considering Ezio’s Family has become the main theme of the franchise. But I feel that the theme is not only about one person (Ezio) anymore. It has evolved into also being about the Assassins’ Brotherhood and the sacrifices all the Assassins have to endure. At the end of the day, what happened to Ezio and his family happened because his father was an assassin.” Over the years, the song would be ‘covered’ by every single Assassin’s Creed soundtrack. My personal favourite cover is the Assassin’s Creed Shadows version.
And it’s not just the videogame community that has taken the song to its collective heart. Ezio’s Family has turned into a live orchestra favourite. “It’s really interesting how the live concert world has embraced that track as well,” Kyd remarks, “It’s being played quite a lot every year in opera houses around the world. I get a lot of outreach from orchestras who are interested in performing a lot of my music, but Ezio’s Family is still my Number One request. So yeah, it’s just one of those things [that happened]. And we had no idea when we were making it.”
Stay tuned for the full Drop C++ interview with Jesper Kyd coming very soon
